The start of a new year is a good time to glance back at the past year and try to make some sense of everything that happened. I will do this in a small way by summing up some of the major ripples in the pond called fantasy during 2010. This means that I have made an overview of the best fantasy novels, series, movies, TV series and games of the past year.
Perhaps this short overview will point out a movie you have not seen or remind you of a novel you should have read during last year. If not, it will at least help you form an opinion of the level of the fantasy media in 2010.
Fantasy books and series
First, a quick look at the most popular fantasy books of the pas year. Several novels stand out but in particular Towers of Midnight, the 13th novel in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. It has been written by Brandon Sanderson and the general opinion is that he has done this quite well. This is also reflected by the number one position of the book in the New York Times Best Seller list and the fact that it remained high in this list and was sold in high numbers for many weeks.
Another novel that is absolutely worth mentioning is Under Heaven, written by Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay is probably best know for Tigana but has shown that he can become a stable and important author in the genre.
Last book I want to mention is the recently released Stonewielder. Written by Ian Cameron Esslemont and set in the Malazan world he has created with Steven Erikson, it is a great read that I will review in the near future.
Fantasy movies, TV series and games
The major fantasy event on the screen in 2010 must have been the latest Harry Potter movie The Deathly Hallows: Part I. This penultimate movie in the Potter Series was of course very popular and successful and, I have to admit, quite good. I will review the movie sometime in the coming weeks.
Of course there were more new fantasy movies in 2010, like Twilight: Eclipse and Clash of the Titans. Both are entertaining films but not ones you will remember as a classic.
Looking at fantasy television series, there was the news of the cancellation of Legend of the Seeker which is a shame but not that big a loss as this TV series had dwindling viewer ratings and simply wasn’t that good. Hopefully, HBO can fill the gap and show how a fantasy TV series should be made when Game of Thrones airs on April 17, 2011!
On the game front there has not been much fantasy activity worth mentioning. The World of Warcraft expansion pack Cataclysm was very successful but that was hardly surprising.
Looking back, I would say it was a pretty decent year for the fantasy genre but not a great one. In one of the next posts I will look ahead and will explain what the year 2011 has to offer and boy, that will be something!
There have been many rumours for quite some time and although producer ABC Studios has not officially said so, several sources are now saying that Legend of the Seeker will be cancelled after it’s second season.
Although I am personally not a big fan of the series and haven’t seen the second year, I do acknowledge Legend of the Seeker as a decent series, probably one of the best fantasy television series around. it would be a shame to see Legend of the Seeker being cancelled this soon.
The TV series has a large fanbase and the episodes had more than reasonable ratings, both in grades and in number of viewers but apparently these have not been good enough for ABC to order a third season.
About Legend of the Seeker
Legend of the Seeker is a television series loosely based on The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. It tells the classical story of the boy Richard Cypher who is destined to become the Seeker of Truth and defeat his evil father Darken Rahl. Richard gets help from wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander and confessor Kahlan.
As indicated above, the cancellation isn’t official yet so there is a chance we will be pleasantly surprised with news that a third season of the Seeker is ordered but don’t count on in.
After comparing the television series Hecules and Xena in a previous post, I figured it would be interesting to create a listing of the best fantasy television series. However, this turned out to be quite difficult. Where there have been quite a few good and successful fantasy movies, fantasy television as a genre has never been as popular as for example the science fiction genre, which had great and long running series like Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Stargate.
You will see that there is only short list of possible contenders for the title of best fantasy television series that I can come up with, as in my view only a few fantasy television series stand out enough to qualify for the title of the best television series. However, I have good hope that around this time next year, a new contender will be around.
